Ammon Shea has been reading dictionaries for twenty years. Along the way he has supported this habit by being a street muscian in Paris, a gondolier in San Diego and a furniture mover in New York City. He lives in New York with his girlfriend (a former lexicographer) and a large number of old dictionaries.- Ammon Shea, Satisdiction: one man's journey into all the words he'll ever need*
The Sun King was a man subject to misjudgment, error and impulse - like you and me.- Barbara W Tuchman, The March of Folly
There was nothing like writing a book for a man who wanted to get away from his own misery, nothing like writing a book for a man who could not sleep.- Axel Munthe, The Story of San Michele
Those who lack the self-trust to speak out are often made to listen.- Michael Gearin-Tosh [real name]
I have learned that this friendly folk who can neither read nor write are far happier than I, who ever since I was a child have been straining my eyes to gain knowledge.- Axel Munthe, The Story of San Michele
Obviously one starts from the position that the saxophone is always a mistake.Well, obviously. Intriguing A-Z 'interview' with China Miéville, an author about whom I know nothing - a situation I now seek to rectify.
You never speak about yourself without loss. Your self-condemnation is always accredited, your self-praise discredited.- Montaigne, Confessions
Now that I am ill, I find I want to make some profound and historic utterances, which my friends will subsequently repeat; but then I get too over-excited.- Jules Renard
The main argument, however, is that your children 'carry you on' after your death: you will not be entirely extinguished, and foreknowledge of this brings consolation at a conscious or subconscious level. But do my brother and I carry on our parents?- Julian Barnes, Nothing To Be Frightened Of
We shall feel better in the morning.- Emile Zola, to his wife, as they were being slowly gassed by a malfunctioning bedroom fireplace.
As the political scientist Richard Betts has argued, in intelligence analysis there tends to be an inverse relationship between accuracy and significance, and this is the dilemma posed by the Mincemeat case.and
As Macintyre observes, the informational supply chain that carried the Mincemeat documents from Huelva to Berlin was heavily corrupted.
...in this case Germany didn’t really act on it at all. Looking at that track record, you have to wonder if Germany would have been better off not having any spies at all.--
When I rode the subways as a kid, I read books from the public library, I read big fat Les Misérables for weeks while I took the IRT to the doctor for my Wednesday allergy shots, I needed to know Jean Valjean lived a more miserable life than I did.- EL Doctorow, 'Lives of the Poets' (in Lives of the Poets)
He saw himself as an accomplished writer, a clear sign of madness in anyone.- Paul Theroux, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star
